Whimsical Portrait | Nature

I've been studying watercolor portraits for a while now, but it always seemed a bit too difficult for me to actually put paint to paper. My drawing skills are not that good and I think that was putting me off. But Irina's class really simplified things for me. I could go for a simple face and focus on the creative aspect of the painting. That made all the difference for me!

So, thank you Irina for putting so much care in your classes and encouraging us to go a step further in our paintings.

I found the inspiration for the outline of my drawing online and adapted to myself. I've seen a lot of artists doing this double exposure kind of painting, so I decided to try it.

I've spent many, many hours on this project... And enjoyed every one of them! Painting every curl individually to match with the rest of the piece was tricky... building the layers but making them soft was tricky too... but I'm really happy with the final result! I especially like the texture on the land - just the way I wanted :)

There are some little things here and there that can be improved... The skintone ended up too light because I was afraid to use more pigment on the wash (and because of that my shadows are not too dark). The eyelashes could be better as well... But that's for the next portrait!

I used the Canson Xl 300gm paper and a round brush #10 and #2. I tried to constric my color palette, so I used a few colors and mixed them to get others - Prussian Blue, Deep Green, Vandyke Brown, Red and Black (Pentel Arts).

Below are some pictures of the process (sketch, first wash, color study, final painting). I also did a little thumbnail of the landscape first, to make sure the colors and composition were right before starting the final piece.